"That miniature hand was so moist and pink and interesting, the temptation was almost irresistable. She pressed her nose forward another fraction on an inch.
'No licks,' Trudy whispered in her ear.
Almondine began to wag her tail, slowly at first, then faster, as if something lond held motionless inside her had gained momentum enough to break free." (33-34)
If you try to come up with a way to describe "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," you will always come up short. With this novel, David Wroblewski has written a great American novel of the story of "Hamlet," and so much of the genius of the tale lies in recognizing the characters and themes from the play of Denmark, and seeing how they have been translated, and fit in Edgar's own story. Whether they be the more clear paralells between the mother figure Gertrude and Trudy, or Fortinbras and Forte-- or the, at first sight, less obvious characters such as Almondine. But yet this novel is more than that. David Wroblewski has written a novel on the intimacies and rages inside a family, a novel on the nature of humans and animals and how, when, and if, those natures differ. And yes, I will touch on the novel's ending in my discussion here.
With the story, Wroblewski has rewritten Shakespeare's "Hamlet" as a great American novel. The life of Edgar, his family and his dogs would stand high on its own, without the knowledge of Hamlet's story; however, the text adds so many worlds to the reader's experience when read with Hamlet and his family in mind. I do not know how I might have reacted had I not been aware of the Hamlet connection before the final act. But I do feel that knowing, still, the tragedy to come did not lessen its effect.
The tale, for all that is tragic, is beautiful. In word and thought, Wroblewski's writing is so often page-stopping perfect. Passages in the beginning, of Edgar finding pieces of his family's past in the rolling lands and houses of his family's farm; the account of Edgar's parents' first child, Edgar's birth and the cub that comes in between are pieces so exact, so immediate they forever leave their mark. The author's descriptions, so full of the air in the barn, the farmhouse and the people living in this space between the woods becomes another character in the story and leaves the reader with the Sawtelle farm long after the last page is turned. "In April, gray curtains of rain swept across the field. The snow rotted and dissolved over the course of a single day and a steam of vegetable odors filled the air. Everywhere, the plot-plot of water dripping off eaves. (23)
Perhaps some of the most beautiful parts of the novel occur when the narrative shifts to point of view of the dog companion who grows with Edgar throughout the novel, Almondine. A narrative which can, without any exaggeration, seamlessly work from that of a person to a dog and back again is no small feat. Wroblewski does this beautifully, and this is without doubt some of the best ficition from a non-human animal's point of view this reader has ever encountered. "Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. [...] In April she began to wake in the night and wander the house, pausing beside the vacant and the blowing furnace registers to ask what they knew, but they never answered. Or knew but couldn't say." (30-31)
There is so much to be read in this story of a family, their home, and the life's work of their generations. What one generation knows of the other, what a parent knows of their child, a child the parent; a person, a friend. And what they do not know, cannot.
"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" is more than the bringing of Shakespearean tragedy to the American family; more than the story of a son trying to understand his father and that man's life, work, companions-- and to avenge him. Some stories stay with you after they are done. Some, you might remember pieces of for a memorable scene or happening. The story of the Sawtelle family, Edgar and his dog Almondine will stay with you long after you have left them, and the tale of a family, their mute son and the dogs they raise on a Wisconsin farm-- and the loss they experience, how they try to find each other-- and will never leave you.
"I thought I'd never see you again, he signed.
You were lost.
Yes, lost.
You didn't need to come back. I would have found you." (550)
There is much said in this short space of a novel, and much that is left unsaid. Our nameless narrator, returning home, to the lands of his youth, for a funeral of an untold person, takes us-- quite literally-- through memory and down the lane to his childhood. A time of reading and retreating and death and friendship and love. "I had been here, hadn't I, a long time ago? I was sure I had. Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like chilhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good." (5) It isn't easy to come to feel for and love a character in a novel, and is more difficult yet to accomplish in a novel short as this. Gaiman does so and more with no seeming effort, swiftly, as we come to know the boy who's name we do not know, who had "Nobody [come] to [his] seventh birthday party." (9) and who believes from a young age that "Books were safer than other people anyway." (9) A series of traumatizing events lead our narrator through the loss of his cat, the witness of his family's border's suicide, and to the house at the end of his lane, to a friend he will make. Lettie Hempstock-- that friend-- dare I say has an instant place of prominence in the world literary canon; this older girl who knows the ways of the world, and that those ways are a kind of magic, and understands the stories of the wild, along with two older generations of her family's women.
